Snopes: Did the Texas Legislature Honor the Boston Strangler?
From https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/texas-boston-strangler/
Did the Texas Legislature Honor the Boston Strangler?
An April Fool's lesson on the perils of vetting material you haven't read thoroughly.
DAVID MIKKELSON
PUBLISHED 13 AUGUST 2000
Back in 1971, Rep. Tom (not Tim) Moore, Jr. of Waco, Texas knowing that his fellow legislators in the Texas House of Representatives often passed bills and resolutions without fully reading or understanding them pulled an April Fools joke on the House by sponsoring a resolution commending Albert de Salvo for his unselfish service to his county, his state and his community. That resolution read, in part:
This compassionate gentlemans dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology.
The joke, of course, was that Albert de Salvo was more commonly known as the Boston Strangler, assumed to be responsible for the murders of thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. (Technically, de Salvo was never convicted or put on trial for any of those killings he was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assaults on several other women and confessed to the thirteen murders as well. He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, and whether he actually committed the murders he confessed to has been a subject of controversy ever since.)
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